


Come back to me

by marguerite_26



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Infidelity, Loneliness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marguerite_26/pseuds/marguerite_26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><span class="ljuser ljuser-name_frayach"></span><a href="http://frayach.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://frayach.livejournal.com/"><b>frayach</b></a>’s stunning <a href="http://hds-beltane.livejournal.com/39373.html">Bound Skerry</a> tells of Draco’s prison. This is Ginny’s.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Come back to me

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bound Skerry](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/7253) by Frayach. 



> Thanks to my betas [](http://bryoneybrynn.livejournal.com/profile)[**bryoneybrynn**](http://bryoneybrynn.livejournal.com/) , [](http://vaysh11.livejournal.com/profile)[**vaysh11**](http://vaysh11.livejournal.com/) and [](http://snegurochka-lee.livejournal.com/profile)[**snegurochka_lee**](http://snegurochka-lee.livejournal.com/) for their help and encouragement. Thank you to my dear artist, [](http://stellamoon.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://stellamoon.livejournal.com/)**stellamoon** , who added something very special to this little fic.

Every Beltane, as winter fades in the warm glow of the sun and every day stretches and brightens, Harry leaves me. I sit and wait by the hearth in our small cottage, a cup of tea heating my palm, and stare at the mantel. Our wedding photo mocks me, sweet smiles and chaste kisses, our friends surrounding us with a glow of pride at our union. I didn’t know then that the man I married held a secret deep within his soul. It took me months to see through the haze of those early bliss-filled weeks to notice the shadow that would pass over his eyes in quiet moments. To see the grim down-turn of his lips and the fierce clench of his jaw when he believed himself alone.

Harry drifts in today, unexpected. He’s suddenly there in the doorway like a wraith in his heavy black cloak, the hood covering half his face. I rush over from the kitchen where I’d been cleaning up after a lonely dinner and planning how to get through yet another night until his return. I put down my just-refilled glass of merlot, and my hands must be trembling because the wine sloshes over the sides. The drips pool about the base into a ring, staining the pale wood of our kitchen table. I make my way to the door, half thinking my husband is nothing more than an apparition; it has been thirty-four days since I’ve last seen him. But Harry’s standing in the doorway. And my cheeks already hurt from the smile I’ve moulded onto my face and the pain I’ve hidden away. It makes no difference though, as his eyes never fall on me.

His tone is soft, gentle. “Hey, Gin,” he says as he kisses my cheek. The touch is feather-light and fleeting; his ice-cold lips brand me.

He toes off his boots and they are caked with sand. There’s sand everywhere, always is when he returns. I’ll be finding it for days, ground into the carpet and hiding in our bed, rough and irritating, impossible to ignore. It is on his neck and stuck to his eyelashes. I’m staring at it long enough that he must notice because he wipes at his face and scowls at the shower of tiny grains he sends to the floor.

“I’m going to hop in the shower.” His voice is raw like he hasn’t slept, hasn’t spoken much in days.

I tell myself it’s not me he’s running from, not me he’s washing from himself. He’s come home to me, after all.

He peels off his cloak and my hand reaches out to take it. He almost-smiles at me, eyes flickering to mine and away again before stealing off to clog our drain with whatever beach is clinging to his skin. The cloak in my hand smells wretched – the familiar stale stench of Beltane bonfires and beneath that the salty, fishy smell of the sea that Harry brings home every year. It burns my nostrils and tightens my throat; I swallow past the rising bile.

I check the pockets before casting the Cleaning Charms and my hand closes on something in Harry’s inside pocket, the one where he often keeps his wand. I don’t know the name of the flower I pull out. The four white petals look like the rockcress that peppers the cracked stones on the south side of the house, but the dark leaves are foreign to me. I crush it in my palm and my eyes sting.

  


There is a broken seashell on the windowsill of Harry’s study. It wasn’t always broken. Years ago it was whole, but a window was left open one night during a storm. The curtain must have swept it onto the floor in a gust of wind. I remember watching Harry the next morning pick up the jagged pieces and return them to their place, his fingers tracing the ridges with a tenderness he showed to little else in his life.

A week after his return, I knock softly on the open study door and whisper, “Harry, I’m going to bed.”

Harry looks up from staring at the shell, his eyes hollow like he too had been split in half by some storm years ago.

I notice there’s sand now on the sill as though he upturned his boot to make a golden bed for his shattered trophy. Cold sweat prickles at my nape.

“I’ll be there in a bit,” he lies to me. His gaze is already back on the sill before I’ve walked away.

I spent the month Harry was gone painting the inside of our lovely little cottage, bright and cheery colours to welcome home the arrival of spring and chase away the sticky blackness that had leached into my chest every time I woke alone in our bed. Now that he’s home a grey storm cloud has bullied its way over our house and cast its shadow. The dense fog of it doesn’t lift for weeks, despite my forced smiles and attempts at light-hearted conversation.

“I like this yellow,” he says one blistering August afternoon, as if noticing it for the first time. I nod and kiss his forehead as the world around me begins to blur.

He finds me later, quietly sobbing in the pantry. He holds me close and doesn’t ask what’s wrong. He smells of grass and raspberries from our bushes in the back that he loves to steal from right after breakfast. He smells of home and of summer and I cling to him until it’s dark.

There is a scrap of blue and red cloth he keeps in his bedside table that I’ve never touched, never taken out to feel its worn silk slip across my fingers. Embroidered on one corner in gold thread is a date and something else, a series of numbers and letters. It’s meaningless to me. I vow that the year he does not come back to me, I will burn the cursed thing. I somehow know it came from the sea.

The air is crisp and glorious as I walk out into the garden and find him on his back, rake abandoned at his feet. His face glows, eyes bright with mirth as he stares up at the sky. “That one looks like Buckbeak.” He points up towards a grouping of clouds.

I grin and something tight in my chest loosens as I lie beside him and point to one that reminds me of a puffy white Flitwick. As our laughter fades, he sits up. I fear the moment has passed, but his face is soft. He’s the man I married, my Harry, and in this moment I _know him_. My breath catches. He reaches up and pulls a fallen leaf from my hair, then he kisses me. A tear rolls down my temple, tickling my ear, and I kiss him back fiercely before he can notice.

That night when he touches me, it’s gentle. A worshipful caress that sings how he still cannot believe I let his hands roam my body, let his fingers slide in and pleasure me. Between my thighs, he is tempered and careful. The lights are out so he cannot see the wetness of my cheeks. He is here with me now, loving me the only way he understands. But he will drift away again, into some self-enforced exile. In the weeks before Beltane he will withdraw, mind and heart, then on the first of May, he will be gone in body, too. When he returns it will be as if he’s left a part of his soul in the wretched place of sand and sea.

Harry’s work keeps him away during the short sunlight hours of winter. He comes home exhausted, a fresh scratch on his cheek that he won’t let me heal. A new scar to add to his collection. There are days when he says little more to me than a quiet _sorry_ as he wakes me with the chill of his skin when he slips beneath our blanket.

The _Prophet_ tells me where he’s been, the criminals he’s caught in the wee hours of the morning. The front page has a photo of Harry with a man at his feet. The image shows Harry binding the suspect, his face vicious and hungry. Ropes pour from Harry’s wand and tighten about the man’s torso until he arches in pain. When Harry yanks the man to standing, and shoves him against the wall, he looks almost feral. I shiver at the natural way the anger settles over his features.

There are days when this quaint cottage on the outskirts of Godric’s Hollow is a prison. Mum is only a Floo call away, yet I surround myself in loneliness like an old quilt. It’s unbearable to listen to her talk of the future, of children, when my husband’s mind, his heart, is somewhere that I will never understand, somewhere with sand and whipping winds and small white flowers with purple leaves.

Beltane approaches again and the warmth of the April breeze poisons us both. He takes to staring out his study window at the pouring rain for hours, his fingers absently stroking the broken shell.

“Ron and Hermione invited us for dinner,” I say. My fist longs to slam against the glass just to see him blink, to have him meet my eye. “I said yes.”

He nods. His eyes leave the thrashing rain, but only to flicker to the calendar.

 _For work,_ is all he ever tells me. Three years ago, I asked Kingsley if there was any way to get a hold of Harry when he was on assignment over Beltane. Kingsley’s confusion – no matter how quickly it’d been covered – told me all I needed to know. I never asked again. I just silently watch my husband wax and wane in and out of my life, drawn away from me like a tide each spring, only to find his way back again until winter begins to ebb once more.

 _Will you ever tell me?_ , I want to ask, but never do. I know the answer. There’s a part of Harry that I will never know, never touch. A bit of him that will never belong to me. Every year it gnaws at my insides as the winds change and the chill of winter turns warm. I wonder if this year he will stay home. I wonder if this year he won’t return.

-fin-

  


**Author's Note:**

> [Original Livejournal post](http://marguerite-26.livejournal.com/527760.html)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Postmaster](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3171862) by [Vaysh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaysh/pseuds/Vaysh)




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